When I got into the industry 33 years ago there were almost 400 carpet manufacturers and each of them had someone that handled technical services. On top of that the fiber producers had some of the best tech services departments in the industry. When the industry started to consolidate in the 80's the first people to get the axe were the tech services people at the fiber companies. There’s been a downhill spiral ever since. The big three carpet manufacturers, Shaw, Mohawk and Beaulieu all have tech services departments, not hugely staffed for the volume they do but each is represented. Some commercial manufacturers, the previous three included, as well as Interface, C&A, Mannington, Milliken and a few others, have good tech services departments, also often overtaxed. Anyone else, for the most part, has no one. However, most people who have anything to do with any flooring product, be it carpet or hard surface, rely on the manufacturers rep for their information and technical advice. Herein lies the problem.

The rep is part of the sales and marketing department. These people sell the product, that’s their job and the most important one, because without them nothing else happens. Unfortunately, these are the same folks who like to look for the one silver bullet that will do all things for all people. They want one adhesive that will stick to any surface, under any condition, which can be used on any of their products. They want to be able to sell any product to anyone so it will perform any task under any circumstance or condition. Unfortunately, this would be a utopian situation and common sense will tell the logical individual this can’t be so. Nothing works for everything no matter what kind of product it is. You can’t wear a dress shoe to do construction work. You can’t have any flooring product perform any task. Yet the rep is considered the primary source for information, probably because a dealer, end user, architect or designer believes the rep is closest to the product so they must know the most. I’m sorry to inform you that this is not the case.

Since the loss of technical people has continued, increasing strain has been placed on the small but excellent group that still exists. The ranks of older reps who really knew their products are dwindling. Young reps can’t keep up with all the technical issues because they’re not taught to. The lack of marketing and sale’s willingness to involve technical people for fear they’ll interfere with sales, causes the burden of technical knowledge, by default unfortunately, to fall on the sales rep. The people buying flooring products rely on the sales rep and the sales reps’ word is taken as gospel. Thus we find one of the largest single causes of product and performance claims for all floor covering products. This may be particularly troublesome in commercial flooring situations where the liabilities in a failure can reach into millions of dollars. For a residential dealer selling 50 to 60 yard installations, the problem, individually certainly isn’t the same, but if there is a proliferation of problems stemming from mis-information from the rep it can be just as painful.

So where are you supposed to get your information and do you even care? Let me answer the last part of the question first - do you even care. Most of you feel that you don’t have problems so there’s no reason to think about having one, that is until you do. Then panic sets in because the words most often spoken are, “we’ve never had this problem before.” Lucky you. You may have flirted with disaster, had it and didn’t get a customer that complained or you’ve just dodged the bullets. Until you have a problem that you need help with and you start making calls only to get “I don’t knows” or a complete runaround, you don’t know what you’ve been missing. All the while the problem is festering, the liability increasing and the chances of you escaping unscathed are rapidly slipping away and where you thought you could get help, you can’t. Now you care. And to the first part of the question, you think you’ll get the help and information you need from the young rep who calls on you and dutifully sells you the products you both make your living with - but you don’t. Unfortunately, there isn’t anyone around to train these folks in technical matters and frankly, the rep is not supposed to be a walking technical encyclopedia for their products, they’re supposed to sell them. Just think of the separation between the automobile salesperson and the technicians in the service department in order to understand the floor covering sales situation. The only difference is not all the manufacturers have the service department so there’s a natural void.

Why should you even care about this? Carpet manufacturing and technology is getting more complex, there are fewer people who actually understand it and those that do understand often do so piece-meal, that is, they know their part but not the whole. If you have a problem you need the whole answer. You can’t solve a problem piece-meal. You have to invest in where you can get the answers you need, the prevention you must have and the resolutions you will inevitabley face somewhere down the road.

It’s frustrating, yet exciting at the same time, to get calls from clients who very often say, “we didn’t know anyone like you existed,” after they have a problem that could have easily been prevented had someone given them guidance, the right answers or the right product. Sorely lacking in the industry is the technical knowledge to keep everyone safe and worse yet, not taking advantage of what is available.